The NFL Breaks With Other Leagues and Asks the Supreme Court to Treat Kalshi's Sports Bets as Gambling

The NFL's games drove more than half of all prediction market trading on the season's opening Sunday. Now the league wants the Supreme Court to rule that those trades are gambling, and that states, not a federal commodities regulator, get to police them.

On Thursday the league filed an amicus brief urging the justices to take up New Jersey's appeal of a Third Circuit ruling that Kalshi's sports contracts are "swaps" under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The Sixth and Ninth Circuits have ruled the opposite way. The NFL hired former US Attorney General William Barr to argue its side.

A regulator too small for the job

The 24-page brief argues that Dodd-Frank swaps exist to hedge risk people already carry, not to create new risk through bets. It paints the CFTC as outmatched: the agency has just 543 employees. And the league says it asked the CFTC and operators to ban contracts that one person could easily manipulate, that involve injuries or officiating, or whose outcome is knowable in advance. They declined.

The NFL also points out that 18-year-olds can trade on Kalshi while most states require bettors to be 21, and calls insider-trading policies "paper tigers" without access to leagues' prohibited-bettor lists.

"Absent the clarity that only this Court can provide, (prediction market) operators will continue exploiting the gap between state and federal regulation, endangering consumers and the integrity of sports events across the country," the brief says. The league wants a ruling before the 2027 season.

The money at stake

The numbers explain why this fight matters. Of the $3.3 billion traded on prediction markets that opening Sunday, $1.8 billion was tied to the NFL. Sports make up 80% of Kalshi's trading volume according to independent research cited by Fortune, and the exchange recorded more than $173 billion in trades through late August 2026, against $25 billion across all registered exchanges in 2025.

Every other major league chose to cash in. MLB named Polymarket its exclusive prediction market sponsor in March and signed an integrity agreement with the CFTC. The NHL became the first major league to license its trademarks to prediction markets, and MLS has partnered too.

Kalshi and the CFTC push back

Kalshi says the NFL has the story backwards. "Contrary to the NFL's statements, the CFTC is actively policing sports-related markets, which are now listed on nearly every U.S. commodities exchange," spokesperson Elisabeth Diana said, adding that Kalshi tried to work with the league and got no response. "All but the NFL have been willing to share data and collaborate to protect game integrity," the company said.

The CFTC, led by chairman Mike Selig, said that "since day 1, the CFTC has engaged with the NFL" and called it "unfortunate" the league never reached an arrangement with the agency. Selig has moved to classify these contracts as swaps rather than gambling.

The NFL is far from alone on the other side. Ohio filed a brief Wednesday backed by 38 states, Republican and Democratic, including California, New York and Pennsylvania. Former CFTC and SEC chair Gary Gensler told the Court that "Congress did not transfer jurisdiction over sports betting from the states to the CFTC." Former Sen. Chris Dodd, who co-wrote Dodd-Frank, said his bill "did not set out to authorize nationwide sports betting through derivatives markets."

Will the justices bite?

The Supreme Court has not agreed to hear the case. But the split between circuits is stark, and the Sixth Circuit's ruling that states can regulate Kalshi set up exactly the kind of conflict the justices exist to resolve. Gaming attorney Daniel Wallach said the NFL's brief "meaningfully increases the chances of a cert grant." The Court is widely expected to take it up next year.

Kalshi has until November 9 to respond to New Jersey's petition. Roughly 20 states are already in litigation over what the states' brief called a "national turf war." If the Third Circuit's view survives, the NFL says it will take its fight for stronger protections to the CFTC, operators and Congress.

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